Day Six

This day started off early, as we left the Albright a little after 6 am on our way down south. We were planning to hit Qumran and Masada, take a dip in the Dead Sea and finish up in Eilat, where we were scheduled to drop off the Diahatsu at 4 pm. We made great time and got to Qumran at 7 am...only to find out it didn't open until 8 am! A silence descended on our car, as we realized we could have slept for another full hour that morning. Instead we spent an exciting hour in the parking lot of a nearby gas station:


Not the start we were hoping for, but we did manage to snooze in the car a little bit. I should point out here that Emily's cold was at its worst this day, but she was a real trooper at every stop. She was even a good sport when she learned I had dragged her out of bed an hour prematurely.


I personally thought that walking around the Judean desert in the hot sun and surveying the ruins of an ancient apocalyptic Jewish community would be the perfect cure for her cold. Such were my hopes when the gates to Qumran opened at 8:00. This site is where most scholars believe the Dead Sea Scrolls were produced, although the scrolls themselves were found in eleven caves in the hills around the site. Here, for example, is Cave Four, which is the closest cave to Qumran and can be seen from the site:


The site itself is rather small but interesting. We saw the whole thing in a hour, and that was including the hokey video they show in the visitor center. The most prominent feature of the site is its multiple ritual baths; there was an aqueduct that ran through the site filling the baths and several cisterns. Here is an example of such a bath:

From the scrolls we know that the community took ritual baths rather frequently. Another highlight was the "scribes' room," which was a two-story building where the scrolls were most likely copied. Here I am in that room (for some reason I look like I only have one arm):
Well, it turns out that Jewish apocalyptic communities do not cure the common cold, so we tried the next best thing: exposure to the sun in an isolated Jewish city whose residents committed mass suicide rather than yield to the Roman army. That's right: Masada. There are two ways to get up to Masada; you can hike up the "Snake Path," which would take appoximately forever, or take the cable car, which ferries you to the top in a matter of minutes. I have not taken a cable car anywhere since my childhood trip to Stone Mountain, GA, so the decision was a no-brainer. Here is the view of the Dead Sea as we neared the top of the mountain:
The site itself covers the entire top of the mountain, and the story goes that with the Romans on the brink of capturing the city, its residents decided that each man should kill his own family, and once this was done, they appointed ten men to kill all the men of the city. Among the last ten men, one was appointed to kill the other nine. And then that last guy killed himself. When the Romans stormed in the next day, the joke was on them. With this cheery story in mind, we
spent about an hour zigzagging the various ruins. It was pretty hot up there, but Emily soldiered through it all, including the pigeon coop. One of the best parts of the site was the views it offered on all sides:

Once we got down, we zipped along the Dead Sea and stopped at En Boqeq for a dip in the Dead Sea. Only as we were arriving did we read in the guide book that the water at En Boqeq is not the real Dead Sea but is a massive reservoir pumped in from the Dead Sea. So much for keepin' it real. Despite these shortcomings, the water is still salty and we still floated. The strangest part about floating in the (not quite) Dead Sea is that it is really hard to stay vertical while you are wading; the water is always pushing you onto your stomach or your back.


After this stop, we head to Eilat, which was our final destination. It is a resort city on the northern tip of the Red Sea and about a three hour drive from the Dead Sea. The drive is almost all through the desert, which was beautiful in its barrenness. At last, as we neared Eilat, like an oasis for weary desert caravaneers, an ice cream shop emerged on the horizon. Cookies'n'Cream never tasted so good! Refreshed from the ice cream, we pulled into Eilat thirty minutes later and dropped off the car. (Thank you, Diahatsu Sirion, for five days of quality four-cylinder performance!)


At the Eilat Guest House, where we stayed, every floor had a porch that overlooked the Red Sea. Here is Emily as we set off for an evening dip:


It was a refreshing swim after a long day of traveling and we were happy to get to bed early that evening, especially considering our big plans for Day Seven!